Control Architecture for Catching a Fixed-Wing Drone using a Ground Vehicle

In this paper a control architecture designed in 3D for landing a fixed-wing drone on a moving Ground Vehicle (GV) is presented. Two control schemes are proposed, one leads the fixed-wing vehicle towards a desired trajectory while the other regulates the GV's speed and tracks the relative position of the aerial vehicle in the
$x-y$
plane. The desired trajectory for the aerial vehicle is based on a hyperbolic tangent function, which guarantees a soft descending flight until reach the GV's altitude. The control strategy for the GV allows it to align with the aerial vehicle until its landing. The Lyapunov theory is used for conceiving the control strategies, guaranteeing the stability on each control stage. The control architecture is evaluated in numerical simulations for validating the systems performance in closed loop. Finally, a preliminary experiment is presented for corroborating its well performance.